He shone his chest-lamp on the receiver assembly in the middle. The SoD had used a Ka-band comms system. Higher frequency than the Ku-band system that CELL had used. Anyone trying to contact CELL right now would get the radio equivalent of a busy signal, as Keelraiser had dismantled the CELL receiver. The SoD’s Ka-band receiver would not pick up any such calls, even if it was working. But what if Skyler could convert this dish into a Ku-band receiver? Shouldn’t be that difficult …
A flash of light distracted him. He looked up. A single lamp bobbled through the darkness, far below.
Skyler spoke into the radio built into his air supply mouthpiece. “Hey! You down there. Name and number!” This was the way the CELLies spoke to each other. You had to do it too if you didn’t want them to think you were putting on airs because you were special.
“Go fuck yourself, Skyler,” a familiar voice said. “It’s just me.”
*
Jack held his aim on the airlock hatch as it opened.
Two people crawled out.
Skyler … and Giles.
“The gang’s all here,” Jack said, stonily. He did not lower his blaster.
Giles collapsed on his face, just as Alexei had done. He cursed in French. But unlike Alexei, he levered himself onto his feet without help. Those rriksti limbs were good for something.
Skyler picked Alexei up. The three of them stood in a huddle, supporting each other. It suddenly occurred to Jack that with their long hair, skinny physiques, and psychedelic tights, they looked like three-quarters of an ‘80s metal band. He squelched the urge to point this out.
“Gonna shoot us all?” Skyler said.
“I told you I don’t need company,” Alexei said to Giles.
“I heard you. I followed you anyway,” Giles said. “And I find him pointing a blaster at your face. Maybe you don’t need company, but you do need help.”
The words could equally have been meant for Jack.
“You are shit at diplomacy,” Giles went on, still speaking to Alexei. “You probably told him they’ll kill him if he doesn’t cooperate. Bah, that’s true, but that just gives him ideas about going out in a blaze of glory.”
Alexei let out an explosive snort of suppressed laughter.Jack struggled not to smile.
“No, no, Alexei. This is how you do it.” Seeing that his humor was working, Giles put on a campy, wheedling voice. “We all miss you, Jack. Without you there is no one to insult my cooking—actually, I don’t cook anymore, I am a xenolinguist again—or complain about the porn shortage. Actually, there is no porn shortage. These people are filthy perverts. The higher the IQ, the more spicy the shit on their hard drives. And that’s only the women! Even I am shocked.”
“Shocked, I tell you, shocked,” Skyler squeaked.
Giles grinned. “Anyway, Jack, we all miss the smell of your farts in the morning, so quit being a hermit, please. There is work waiting for you to do.” He waggled his eyebrows. “By the way, nice pecs. The weightlifting pays off! Too hot to handle, especially with the blaster.”
Alexei and Skyler were in stitches at this point. Jack could not stop himself from joining in their laughter. He threw his blaster up into the air and caught it by the stock, then pointed it at the floor. “Hard drives full of porn? I can feel my willpower crumbling as we speak.” He grinned. “So what sort of work wants doing, exactly?”
Giles glanced at Alexei. “That’s for him to decide.”
“Unfortunately, it’s not,” Alexei said. “I have to get the Steering Group’s approval for all new assignments. But I can probably get you something at the waterworks or the oxygen refinery.”
Jack accepted the inevitable as gracefully as he could. “That doesn’t sound too bad.” Working outside would allow him to avoid any contact with Keelraiser. “Just as long as it doesn’t involve welding.”
Throughout his career as a spaceship pilot he’d periodically doubled as a welder. In the same way, Alexei had doubled as a plumber. They used to joke about how much more money they would be making if they’d stuck to those humble trades.
Alexei’s face lit up. “Jack, do you know how much plumbing I had to do during the construction phase? After that, sitting at a desk feels like a vacation.”
“On second thoughts, maybe I’ll take the welding job,” Jack grinned.
“Good! Now can we get out of here?” Giles said. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but this place stinks like a toilet.” As they rode back to the bunker in Skyler’s rover, Giles kept talking. “Oh, I also have a nice surprise for you. We’ve reformed Interstellar Fusion. You remember, Skyler and Stepstone’s band.”
“Our folk band,” Skyler said mournfully.
“Ho ho! Now it is a Slayer cover band. I learn to play keyboards. It’s a shame you cannot play an instrument, Jack, or sing for shit.”
“Be very glad I have no intention of trying,” Jack said. The rover bounced over the lunar terrain. He’d left his tent, but he would be coming back to it. He’d set a couple of booby traps at the entrance to the hab, just in case the spin gravity wasn’t enough of a booby trap, so no one could fuck with his stuff in his absence. He could do this. Work for a living. Everyone ought. And who knows, it might lead to some way of getting back to Earth.
CHAPTER 16
When they arrived at the bunker, Jack stared curiously at the ramp, like the entrance to an underground carpark. At the bottom of the ramp there actually was a carpark. Skyler left his rover beside the others. They entered an airlock that Jack recognized from the mountaintop CELL habs, now welded into a wall of aluminum panels.
“Did you break down the old habs for parts?”
“We left two of them up there as decoys,” Alexei said. “Just in case the Lightbringer does throw something at us.”
Scrubber, showers. For the last six months, Jack’s ablutions had consisted of cold-water sponge baths. He was appalled to see how much dirt came off him. He put on the fake jeans and t-shirt they gave him without a word.
“Alexei, what the fuck are you wearing?” He laughed.
Alexei had changed into a sort of robe. Dark gray, with a red border. It looked like a rriksti formal garment. He tugged at the draped fabric in embarrassment. “It’s printed from recycled suizh fiber. Itchy like hell.”
They stood in a kind of changing room outside the showers. Banks of lockers rose to head height. Clangs, clonks, and gurgles echoed from behind the walls: the sounds of life in a tin can.
Footsteps rang on the aluminum floor. “You’re back! Good to see you, man.” James Coetzee strode around the lockers. He, too, wore one of the copycat rriksti robes. One hand was tucked in the crossover of the robe, the other outstretched.
Jack stiffly returned the handshake. “I thought I’d come and see if you needed any help.”
“Sure, sure, there’s always work for willing hands.” In light of what the guys had said about Coetzee’s whispering campaign against Jack, this sounded like gloating. Jack kept his expression bland, remembering how he used to deal with RAF officers and NASA bureaucrats. Don’t talk back. Let them think they’re winning.
Alexei said, “James, I want to put him on the refinery crew. It’ll be a good fit.”
Three other people advanced behind James. All wore robes. Two were CELLies, a man and a woman. The third was Koichi Masuoka. Coetzee introduced them as the balance of the Steering Group. They had not let Jack get even ten paces inside the bunker before intercepting him. They didn’t want him here, regardless of what Alexei had said. Alexei had not mentioned, either, that Koichi was on this Steering Group thing. The Japanese astronaut used to be a friend of Jack’s, but his sabotage attack on the SoD had moved him into the enemies column. Jack autopiloted through the small talk, trying to work out how Koichi had managed to float to the top again.
When he caught a glimpse of a handgun inside the crossover of Koichi’s robe, he knew the answer. Koichi Masuoka had found his way into a role he was well suited for: enforcer.
“So I th
ink we have just the thing for you, Jack,” Coetzee said. “Come on!”
They walked through institutional, metal-walled corridors. The odors of the bunker made Jack nostalgic for the tent he had left less than an hour ago. No earthy smell of growing things. Instead, ozone and machine oil. The sharp tang of oxygen fresh from the ventilator, and the furry redolence of under-washed human bodies. CELLies were everywhere, creeping along like scared mice. They passed through a high-ceilinged mess shaped like a subway tunnel. People sat clumped at the end nearest the screens. Images of dark-skinned soldiers bivouacking in a field yanked Jack’s head around, but Coetzee was already moving on.
Operational control spaces. The smell of hot circuit boards. Acrid stink of overloaded insulation. Jack got the distinct sense that he was not so much getting the grand tour as being paraded around: a head on a pike. People zombied out at computers woke up as they passed, stared gleefully.
Storage rooms, dormitories, the gurgles of wastewater being drawn through rigid pipes.
Jack heard the whapping of mighty fans ahead, and detected a smell he knew all too well.
The smell of shit.
“Behold, the first farm on the moon!” Coetzee said, and pushed through a swing door into blazing light.
Lush green plants rose dozens of feet into the air, supported only by lunar gravity. Potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, every kind of bean—all the calorie-dense stuff that Jack himself grew. However, this garden put his to shame. It was, as Coetzee said, a farm. The plants grew in floor-level troughs of black, pungent soil.
“Oh yeah, you mentioned they were switching to dirt farming,” Jack said to Alexei, who was looking really miserable now, barely meeting his eyes.
They toured linked caverns that must have covered two square kilometers. The more distant caves were just echoing holes lined with aluminum, yet to be filled with earth and plants. Other caves held fish tanks roofed with leafy vegetables, and banks of wire rabbit hutches.
“My bunnies,” Giles said, trailing a seven-fingered hand over the wire. “I cannot bear to eat them. I’ve become a pescetarian!”
“Where are the rriksti?” Jack said, as they returned to the cavern full of fairytale-tall potato plants. It beggared belief that Keelraiser wasn’t hovering, umpiring Coetzee’s power games.
“Over there,” Skyler said, speaking for the first time since they began the tour. He waved at the far side of the farm. “X-ray country.”
“Ah.”
“Wall’s a sandwich of aluminum and stabilized rock dust. But you can go over there if you like. Anyone can. It’s not as if we live in a gulag crossed with a Scientology center, after all.” Skyler jammed his hands in his armpits and gazed up at the towering plants. “This wasn’t my idea,” he said so softly that Jack barely caught it over the echoes and the rustling of the farm.
Coetzee herded them past sunflower-sized spinach plants, out of the light. Dirt splattered the floor and walls of a dog-legged corridor. “This is unacceptable,” Coetzee fretted. “Look at this mess. You can make a big difference starting right here, Jack!”
They came out in another cavern. Tanks the size of rocket boosters lay on their sides, connected by pipes. A worker in shit-splattered mask, coverall, and boots clambered backwards out of the nearest one, lugging a bucket, which he (or maybe she) dumped into a large open vat filled with waste and grit. The smell was unspeakable. Grinding and sloshing noises shook the air. Coetzee raised his voice. “This is one of the most important facilities in the bunker.”
“It certainly is,” Jack said. He knew what he was looking at. An industrial-scale sewage plant. “You use the digested solids to make soil, I suppose? Pump the water to a distiller?”
“Hey, man, you know more about this than I do! That’s why I’d like you to join the waste treatment team here. Your expertise will be invaluable in adding efficiencies to the process.”
Jack laughed out loud. He didn’t have to force it. There were no efficiencies to be added to sewage processing. It was what it was. He understood very well that Coetzee planned to humiliate him by offering him this job—no, forcing him to take this job; there stood Koichi the enforcer, in case there was any doubt about that. But the joke was on Coetzee. Jack had helped to maintain the SoD’s sewage system for four years. He used to unclog the toilets with his bare hands and a gaffer hook. More recently, he’d mixed his own shit with lunar gravel to make soil, using a chair-leg to stir the disgusting paste. He was an old hand at this.
“Delighted to be of help,” he said, enjoying Coetzee’s sour expression. He frowned at Alexei, although he understood that Alexei had done what he had to do to keep them all breathing.
Alexei reddened. He said to Coetzee, “You piece of shit. If it’s so important, why don’t you do it yourself? Maybe you should take a turn in that tank. Head-first. No one would notice the fucking difference.”
“Back off,” Coetzee said calmly, as his people stepped forward to shield him.
Jack tensed, ready to hold Alexei back. The male CELLie was moving in, Koichi sidestepping to get a clear shot. It would be madness to start a fight.
But to Jack’s surprise, Alexei did back off. He contented himself with saying, “Be careful you don’t forget human things like decency, fairness, and respect for others!”
Jack studied his friend, puzzled. In the old days, once Alexei got going, nothing stopped him. He’d had a berserker streak. He had once bragged about killing a man in a bar fight. But now … He’d changed. Softened. Why?
Coetzee smirked, safe amidst his people. “Human things are nice, Alexei, but survival comes first.”
It was a blatant threat, and once again Jack wondered why Keelraiser wasn’t keeping this shit in check.
Well, maybe he didn’t want to. Maybe the whole point was to turn this human community into a copycat rriksti community, complete with violent, dictatorial leadership.
With that gloomy thought in mind, Jack watched the Steering Group leave, sweeping Alexei along with them.
Skyler and Giles stayed behind. “Did you see his hand?” Skyler whispered.
“Whose?”
“Coetzee’s. Look.”
Jack peered after them. His jaw dropped. Coetzee’s left hand, which he’d been hiding inside his robe, was … not there. The wrist ended in a skin cap, with seven little nubs of flesh sprouting out, just like Giles’s arms before his limbs regenerated.
“Just like mine,” Giles said, echoing Jack’s thoughts. “Except he begged for it.”
*
Alexei went home. He dropped onto the bed, after making sure it was clear of babies. “That went badly.”
Nene lay down beside him. She already knew how it had gone. The apartment might be radioproof, but she’d just returned from her shift in the clinic, where she would have heard the whole thing. Keelraiser did not need surveillance cameras (although there were plenty of those scattered around the bunker) when almost every human being had a comms implant, which transmitted everything they said and heard to X-ray country.
“You should have hit him,” she said.
“You think so?”
Alexei was not wearing the headset he used to depend on. Her voice came to him through the comms implant in his left earlobe. Yes, he’d gotten chipped, too. How was he going to turn down the opportunity to talk to his wife without relying on a clunky wearable?
Nene nuzzled her face into his neck. Her bio-antennas combed through his hair like gentle fingers. “If that schleerp wants to be a rriksti, he should start by learning to fight.”
The sadness in her voice came through clearly.
“If I hit him, I’d have broken my hand,” Alexei said wryly. “I almost broke my leg getting into Jack’s hab earlier.”
“Maybe you should get the bone transfusions.”
Cleanmay, the rriksti doctor, had come up with a regime of transfusions to improve what he saw as the inferior spaceworthiness of human skeletons. During their journey here, Cleanmay had not had any of t
he tech he needed to doctor properly, but now he did. CELL had all the medical devices you’d find at a state-of-the-art hospital on Earth, including the equipment for bone marrow transfusions. The rriksti had hacked, jury-rigged, and reprogrammed the equipment to perform a different type of transfusion, replacing the calcium in human bones with a crystalline structure of fluorine, magnesium and cobalt. The theory was that all that stuff wouldn’t get out into the bloodstream. The first takers, including Coetzee, had shown no signs of dying yet.
“Maybe I should,” Alexei sighed. “And the eye surgery, too. I’d love to see you as you really are.”
“You do see me as I really am,” Nene said. She rolled on top of him, feather-light in this gravity. The soft mound of her groin pressed against him through his stiff, itchy robe. “You’re the only one who ever has.”
“Are the babies asleep?” He assumed so, given the silence.
“Yes, so we’ll have to be quiet.”
He slid his hands inside her shorts, parted the irresistible cleft between her buttocks.
When he came, it felt like he was releasing all the anger and poison and worry into her. She neutralized it.
But afterwards, it all returned—the Earth-like gravity in the rotating hab, the blaster pointing at his face, the betrayal in Jack’s eyes, the reckless and pointless confrontation with Coetzee … “I wonder if you see me as I really am, lapochka.”
“I see my husband.” They were not actually married. Rriksti didn’t marry, and there was no such thing as a priest at CELL, but the idea entranced Nene. “I see the father I always wanted to give my babies. Am I wrong?”
She wasn’t wrong. Alexei reaffirmed the decision he’d made today. He’d do whatever it took to keep her and the babies from harm. They weren’t his children, in the biological sense ... but he had opened his heart to them, because they were Nene’s, and now counted them as his own. He would protect them, even if it meant sacrificing his dignity to Coetzee.
Killshot: A First Contact Technothriller (Earth's Last Gambit Book 4) Page 12
